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Day: June 4, 2009

I thought quite a bit before put­ting this up. While I sup­port Simon Singh, I have doubts about Sense About Science. Sense About Science is loosely con­nec­ted with Spiked Online through Living Marxism, which seems to think Christopher Monckton is a cred­ible speaker on cli­mate change. The cli­mate change debate is one of the major sources of pseudos­cientific non­sense on the web, so it’s dis­ap­point­ing that Sense About Science has so little on the topic. In the end I signed because Jack of Kent is ask­ing for sig­na­tures. It was a big help that George Monbiot and Nick Cohen, who are aware of the his­tory of the group, signed. Even now I’m not com­fort­able with the title of the let­ter, which implies sci­ent­ists might some­how be exempt from laws that apply to every­one else.

This is another reason why I’m wary of sign­ing any­thing that gets passed along by a group. If you want to sign with hon­esty you need to look into exactly what you’re sign­ing. Often there simply isn’t time to do that.